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    lM* THE LEADEB. TNo. 397, October 31,185...

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    THE NEW ASPECT IN INDIA. The operations ...

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    Indian Military Prospects. Delhi Has At ...

    Once more , then , the British flag . waves over the ramparts of Delhi . The stronghold of rebellion has been stormed and captured , and the focus of disaffection is , for the time at least , put out . But the puppet King appears to have _ escaped . There is , indeed , a rumour of his Majesty having been made prisoner : but we cannot trace the report to any reliable source . " While the living representative of the Q-beat Mogul continues at large , the standard of revolt will be ever Taised , or ready for raising , in whatever quarter that personage may find an asylum .

    This is an inevitable consequence of the titular monarch having abandoned 120 . 000 Z . ¦ a year and a quiet life for traitorous intrigues ^ nd dreams of restoration , destined , ere long , to end in poverty and exile . The King of JD ^ lhi must , therefore , be looked up with as little loss of time as possible . We have no sympathy with one who so little deserves any . The HouBe of Timour owes its continued

    existence to British interposition . On the 12 th of September , 1803 , Lord Lake released poor blind Shah Alxtjm from many years of captivity and subjection to the iron rule of the Mahrattas . His empire had already passed away ; and so had the day for reconstituting it . He lived thenceforth and died ( as his successors have since lived and died ) a wealthy pensioner of the British Grovernnaent . Indeed , far too great- indulgence

    was shown towards these royal shadows . Their permittpd regal pomp in Delhi had long "been recognized as , a fatal error . But the mistake remained unconnected , until at iaat" it corrected itself . " What a wonderful in & sitn is it—* That a Native [ of India ] may forget an injury , but he never forgets a 'benefit ! ' Xet in this dictum we own to having once believed—ay , as firmly as we were convSncjB ^ that Olive e Cromweli , cut off

    CjhasxjbstheFibst ' s head with his own hands . Since our remarks of the 4 th July were penned , the nature of the King of Deihi ' s gratitude has been more fully manifested . " We could pardon the ill-starred ambition that aspired to recover an ancestral throne , but when a would-be Emperor of the East

    has stooped to be the instrument of common thieves and murderers , he cannot reasonably expect to be judged independently of his associates . Their lots are cast together , and together they must hang ; although , in respect of his . antecedents , the King of the Mutineers may be indulged , pace nostrd , -with a silken rope , and the gallows of Ha . man \

    Delhi is ours again ; but the struggle is not yet over , nor is it likely to be soon terminated . Th § head of the conspiracy has been sorel y bruised , but its limbs are fiercely writhing still . Hitherto , all the main operations have been confined to the vicinity of great lines of communication , such as " the river Ganges and the Grand Trunk Road . All this must now be changed . The war will no > w be transferred to hill and jungle . A series of campaigns may be looked tor of the most

    harassing nature—unhealthy too—and eventually more destructive to human life than any number of pitched battles , fought by the same number of troops , within a given period of time . All the North-Western Provinces have to be more or less reconquered : Oude , Rohilcund , Gwalior , Bundelcund , and the Saugor and Nerbudda territories almost . m 7 mi ¦ ... . « The whole of

    entirely so . these scutes are dotted with forts and strongholds of every description ; and the trouble that some of these are capable of giving , even to a well appointed detachment , is long since but too well known . Central India ia already menaced , and much confusion prevails throughout all that important region . The Bengal mutiny etui hastens to its completion j witness the

    recent instances of the 50 th N . I . ( at Nagode ) and the 52 nd NJ . ( at Jubbulpore ) , which leave a balance of three regiments still supposed to be faithful . Seditious movements are also rife in the Bombay army . Nor could it well be otherwise , seeing , as we have before mentioned , that more than half of the Bombay Sepoys are drawn from Oude or the neighbouring districts , and arc own brothers to the class with which the Bengal army swarms .

    It is far from our wish or intention to speak discouragingly ; unless , indeed , it be to discourage false confidence , an error that has so often proved the bane of military enterprise under British auspices . AVe most sincerely believe that all will come right in due time ; but no relaxation must be dreamed of in the efforts now making . There will be

    work enough yet to test the military genius of our best and bravest commanders , and the endurance of our hardiest troops . The intelligence received by the last overland mail breaks off so abruptly as not to admit of our pursuing the present subject into anything like detail . The succeeding despatches may perhaps supply us with a more definite text .

    Lm* The Leadeb. Tno. 397, October 31,185...

    lM * THE LEADEB . TNo . 397 , October 31 , 185 V .

    The New Aspect In India. The Operations ...

    THE NEW ASPECT IN INDIA . The operations at Delhi must be regarded as the prelude to a systematic and laborious campaign . We have still to wait for intelligence of the effect produced upon the native mind by the result of the six days' conflict between the forces under General "Wilson and those of the Mogul apparition . "We cannot doubt , however , that it will be considerable . The spell of the sudden Mohammedan triumph has been destroyed , and

    circumstances accompanied its collapse which will alienate the sympathies of large numbers who had previously relied upon the grandiloquent assurances of the extraordinary Uestoration attempted in the Norbh-West . While the four columns were preparing to advance , some princes at the palace sent to General Wilson offering to surrender the murderers upon condition of being themselves pardoned by the British Government . The answer was that future heralds would be

    hanged . This incident must have shown to the Sepoys what trust they would repose in the chiefs under whose standards so many of their comrades have fallen . Dissension , however , partially opened a -way to the attack . The General defeated at NufTjughur , afraid toreturn in disgrace , abandoned the city and took to military freebooting on his private account . Thus , the rebellion had begun to dissolve between the Jumna and the Sutlej even before the great achievement of the 14 th and 20 th

    of September . Maj or-General Tuckeh , himself no optimist , writing before the event , said , " With the reoccu pntion of Delhi , the revolt in our old possessions in the Upper Provinces will cease , and we shall have simply to resume our control and authority . " The grand arena of the struggle has been thus transferred to Oude . While Lucknowand the forts along the Gogra remained in possession of the rebels , General Outba . m ' s Commissionership would be equivalent to the royalty of Barataria ; but the political aspects of that

    country as exhibited by the recent despatches , are of a very remarkable character . From various quarters the Hindoo population had intimated their anxiety to bo rid of the monstrous Mohammedan authority which had been thrust upon them . Tho Nana Sahib , in fact , was neither more nor less than a lieutenant of tho fictitious King of DfiiiUr , to whose sovereignty his proclamations have generally referred , aud who stood at the head of an armed Muslim conspiracy , into which bodies of tho Hindoos had been decoyed . The people , as a people

    have taken no part in the insurrection except to intercept and kill the dispersed mutineers . At the same time , we should be mistaken if , calculating upon the fall of Delhi as a dislocation of the revolt , we omitted to notice the fact that the native Bengal army was chiefly a Hindoo force . It contained less than thirteen thousand Mohammedans the vast majority being made up of Brahmins , Rajpoots , and Hindoos of au inferior description . The larger proportion

    of Mohammedans is in Madras , of the Mahrattas and mixed castes in Bombay . Therefore , keeping in view the military character of the outbreak , we are at no loss to imagine how the Mohammedans , with a deep design , worked upon the growing rancour of the Hindoos , who , when instigated by their comrades of another religion , formed plans and combinations of their own , but not iu concert with the people—if so loose an aggregate as the population of

    India can be so termed . Brahmins and Rajpoots flung themselves into the cause of tlie Sullateen of Delhi . Goojars and riff-raff joined them . Some of the kindred of the Sepoy s were drawn into the movement . But the hereditary chieftains , the zemindars , aud the ryots generally stood firm , actuated by friendly feelings , or by considerations of iiiterest . The Nana Sahib is a Mahratta , with a grievance ; but HoiiKA . ii and Slndiah are not with him . We hold it to be impossible that the small English army , without

    reinforcements , should have lield its ground so well , and broken up the political organization at Delhi , had the mass of the inhabitants of India been arrayed , even by their passive sympathies , against them . But between the several divisions of the Bengal army there was the bond of language . The Mohammedan spoke Hindostani to the . Rajpoot , while in Madras he was unintelligible to the Tamiluu and Telinga . This facilitated the insurrection , and gave it a unity and concentration which it could not otherwise have

    possessed . These points are brought out with fresh . and peculiar distinctness in the latest intelligence . The union of the rebels is palpablyshown to have been ephemeral aud fortuitous . Even at Delhi the garrison was without regular plans , and acknowledged no undivided allegiance . The division defeated at Nuffjughur inarched off , as we have seen ,

    upon a separate adventure , and never returned to tho city . While the streets and walls were being forced , the cavalry and large bodies of infantry consulted their own safety by disappearing across the river . So also in the Lower Provinces . Two regiments in Oude sneaked out of tho enemy ' s lines , and proposed terms of accommodation . Clearly , the mutiny has no longer a consistent or substantial basis . It must now

    range over an immense ' open , ' the bepoya havingpoBseased themselves of no considerable fortress except the citadel of Delhi . Politically , they represent no cause whatever— - unless , perhaps ,- that of a mendicant Mogul in woman ' s clothes . That is an olugy which will scarcely continue to excite tho enthusiasm of thiry millions of the Faithful . With the progress made by the army Me public is undoubtedly content . We happen moment

    to have good men in India at this ; certainly , wo could not havo better than Lawiienoe , Wilson , Nicholson , Havelook , NuiiJi , Eriuo , and Comk Campbm * - Octjiam has bo far done hia work well . Hut tho civil power is unfortunately in an oilicious fever , and thoro aro strange reports ot collisions between tho Governor-General and tho Cominander-m-Chiof . Wo do not wian to exceed our knowledge ; but a few plum questions may bo put without injury to » * iuy

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 31, 1857, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_31101857/page/12/